Cardamine pratensis
Cardamine pratensis, is a flowering plant in the family Brassicaceae, native throughout most of Europe and Western Asia. The specific name pratensis is Latin for "meadow." Cardamine pratensis is a herbaceous, perennial plant growing to 40–60 cm tall, with pinnate leaves 5–12 cm long with 3–15 leaflets, each leaflet about 1 cm long. The flowers are produced on a spike 10–30 cm long, each flower 1–2 cm in diameter with four pale violet-pink petals; the style of the fruit is longish. It grows best close to water, its common name cuckooflower derives from the formation of the plant's flowers at around the same time as the arrival each spring of the first cuckoos in the British Isles. The species is found throughout the British Isles. Recorded in Ireland from all 40 of the "vice-counties", it is grown as an ornamental plant in gardens, has become naturalised in North America as a result of cultivation. In some European countries, including parts of Germany, the plant is now under threat, it is a food plant for the orange tip butterfly and makes a valuable addition to any garden which aims at attracting wildlife.
It was once used as a substitute for watercress. In folklore it was said to be sacred to the fairies, so was unlucky if brought indoors, it was not included in May Day garlands for the same reason. It is the county flower of the English county of Cheshire. Blanchan, Neltje. Wild Flowers: An Aid to Knowledge of our Wild Flowers and their Insect Visitors. Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
Moorhen
Moorhens — sometimes called marsh hens — are medium-sized water birds that are members of the rail family. Most species are placed in the genus Gallinula, Latin for "little hen", they are close relatives of coots. They are referred to as gallinules. One of the species of Gallinula was found to have enough differences to form a new genus Paragallinula with the only species being the Lesser moorhen. Two species from the Australian region, sometimes separated in Tribonyx, are called "native hens"; the native hens differ visually by shorter and stubbier toes and bills, longer tails that lack the white signal pattern of typical moorhens."Marsh Hens" are mentioned in the Edgar Allan Poe story "The Gold-Bug", as part of a description of the ecology of Sullivan's Island. The main characters prepare Marsh Hens for supper at one point early in the story; these rails are brown and black with some white markings in plumage colour. Unlike many of the rails they are easy to see, feeding in open water margins rather than hidden in reedbeds.
They have short rounded wings and are weak fliers, although capable of covering long distances. The common moorhen in particular migrates up to 2,000 km from some of its breeding areas in the colder parts of Siberia; those that migrate do so at night. The Gough moorhen on the other hand is considered flightless; as common in rails, there has been a marked tendency to evolve flightlessness in island populations. Moorhens can walk well on their strong legs, have long toes that are well adapted to soft uneven surfaces; these birds are omnivorous, consuming plant material, small rodents and eggs. They are aggressively territorial during the breeding season, but are otherwise found in sizeable flocks on the shallow vegetated lakes they prefer; the genus Gallinula was introduced by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760 with the common moorhen as the type species. The genus Gallinula contains seven extant and extinct species: †Samoan moorhen, Gallinula pacifica – sometimes placed in Pareudiastes, extinct †Makira moorhen, Gallinula silvestris – sometimes placed in Pareudiastes or Edithornis, extinct †Tristan moorhen, Gallinula nesiotis – sometimes placed in Porphyriornis.
Apart from the 1–3 extinctions in more recent times, another 1–4 species have gone extinct as a consequence of early human settlement: Hodgen's waterhen of New Zealand—which belongs in subgenus Tribonyx—and a species close to the Samoan moorhen from Buka, Solomon Islands, certainly distinct from the Makira moorhen, as the latter cannot fly. The undescribed Viti Levu gallinule of Fiji would either be separated in Pareudiastes if that genus is considered valid, or may be a new genus; the undescribed "swamphen" of Mangaia tentatively assigned to Porphyrio, may belong to Gallinula/Pareudiastes. Still older fossils document the genus since the Late Oligocene onwards; the genus seems to have originated in the general region of Australia. By the Pliocene, it was distributed worldwide: Gallinula sp. Gallinula kansarum Gallinula balcanica. Gallinula gigantea The ancient "Gallinula" disneyi has been separated as genus Australlus. Among non-Passeriformes, this genus has a long documented existence; some unassigned fragmentary rail fossils might be from moorhens or native hens.
For example, specimen QM F30696, a left distal tibiotarsus piece from the Oligo-Miocene boundary at Riversleigh, is similar to but than and differs in details from "G." disneyi. It can not be said. From size alone, it might have been an ancestor of G. mortierii. In addition to paleosubspecies of Gallinula chloropus, the doubtfully distinct Late Pliocene to Pleistocene Gallinula mortierii reperta was described, referring to the population of the Tasmanian native hen that once inhabited mainland Australia and became extinct at the end of the last ice age, it may be that apart from climate change it was driven to extinction by the introduction of the dingo, which as opposed to the marsupial predators hunted during the day, but this would require a survival of mainland Gallinula mortierii to as late as about 1500 BC."G." disneyi was yet another flightless native hen, indicative of that group's rather basal position among moorhens. Its time and place of occurrence suggest it as an ancestor of G. mortierii, from which it differed in its much smaller size.
However, some limb bone proportions are strikingly different, in any case such a scenario would require a flightless bird to change but little during some 20 million years in an environment rich in predators. As the fossils of G. disneyi as well as the rich recent and subfossil material of G. mortierii shows no evidence of suc
Site of Special Scientific Interest
A Site of Special Scientific Interest in Great Britain or an Area of Special Scientific Interest in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle of Man. SSSI/ASSIs are the basic building block of site-based nature conservation legislation and most other legal nature/geological conservation designations in the United Kingdom are based upon them, including national nature reserves, Ramsar sites, Special Protection Areas, Special Areas of Conservation; the acronym "SSSI" is pronounced "triple-S I". Sites notified for their biological interest are known as Biological SSSIs, those notified for geological or physiographic interest are Geological SSSIs. Sites may be divided into management units, with some areas including units that are noted for both biological and geological interest. Biological SSSI/ASSIs may be selected for various reasons, which for Great Britain is governed by published SSSI Selection Guidelines. Within each area, a representative series of the best examples of each significant natural habitat may be notified, for rarer habitats all examples may be included.
Sites of particular significance for various taxonomic groups may be selected —each of these groups has its own set of selection guidelines. Conservation of biological SSSI/ASSIs involves continuation of the natural and artificial processes which resulted in their development and survival, for example the continued traditional grazing of heathland or chalk grassland. In England, the designating body for SSSIs, Natural England, selects biological SSSIs from within natural areas which are areas with particular landscape and ecological characteristics, or on a county basis. In Scotland, the designating authority is Scottish Natural Heritage. In the Isle of Man the role is performed by the Department of Environment and Agriculture. Geological SSSI/ASSIs are selected by a different mechanism to biological ones, with a minimalistic system selecting one site for each geological feature in Great Britain. Academic geological specialists have reviewed geological literature, selecting sites within Great Britain of at least national importance for each of the most important features within each geological topic.
Each of these sites is described, with most published in the Geological Conservation Review series, so becomes a GCR site. All GCR sites are subsequently notified as geological SSSIs, except some that coincide with designated biological SSSI management units. A GCR site may contain features from several different topic blocks, for example a site may contain strata containing vertebrate fossils, insect fossils and plant fossils and it may be of importance for stratigraphy. Geological sites fall into two types, having different conservation priorities: exposure sites, deposit sites. Exposure sites are where quarries, disused railway cuttings, cliffs or outcrops give access to extensive geological features, such as particular rock layers. If the exposure becomes obscured, the feature could in principle be re-exposed elsewhere. Conservation of these sites concentrates on maintenance of access for future study. Deposit sites are features which are limited in extent or physically delicate—for example, they include small lenses of sediment, mine tailings and other landforms.
If such features become damaged they cannot be recreated, conservation involves protecting the feature from erosion or other damage. Following devolution, legal arrangements for SSSIs and ASSIs differ between the countries of the UK; the Isle of Man ASSI system is a separate entity. Scottish Natural Heritage publishes a summary of the SSSI arrangements for SSSI owners and occupiers which can be downloaded from the SNH website. Legal documents for all SSSIs in Scotland are available on the SSSI Register, hosted by The Registers of Scotland. Further information about SSSIs in Scotland is available on the SNH website; the decision to notify an SSSI is made by the relevant nature conservation body for that part of the United Kingdom: Northern Ireland Environment Agency, Natural England, Scottish Natural Heritage or Natural Resources Wales. SSSIs were set up by the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949, but the current legal framework for SSSIs is provided in England and Wales by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, amended in 1985 and further amended in 2000, in Scotland by the Nature Conservation Act 2004 and in Northern Ireland by the Nature Conservation and Amenity Lands Order 1985.
SSSIs are covered under the Water Resources Act 1991 and related legislation. An SSSI may be made on any area of land, considered to be of special interest by virtue of its fauna, geological or physiographical / geomorphological features. SSSI notification can cover any "land" within the area of the relevant nature conservation body, including dry land, land covered by freshwater; the extent to which an SSSI/ASSI may extend seawards differs between countries. In Scotland an SSSI may include the intertidal land down to mean low water spring or to the extent of the local planning authority area, thus only limited areas of estuaries and coastal waters beyond MLWS may be included. In England, Natural England may notify an SSSI over estuarial waters and further adjacent waters in certain circumstances (section 28 of The
Lagoon
A lagoon is a shallow body of water separated from a larger body of water by barrier islands or reefs. Lagoons are divided into coastal lagoons and atoll lagoons, they have been identified as occurring on mixed-sand and gravel coastlines. There is an overlap between bodies of water classified as coastal lagoons and bodies of water classified as estuaries. Lagoons are common coastal features around many parts of the world. Lagoons are shallow elongated bodies of water separated from a larger body of water by a shallow or exposed shoal, coral reef, or similar feature; some authorities include fresh water bodies in the definition of "lagoon", while others explicitly restrict "lagoon" to bodies of water with some degree of salinity. The distinction between "lagoon" and "estuary" varies between authorities. Richard A. Davis Jr. restricts "lagoon" to bodies of water with little or no fresh water inflow, little or no tidal flow, calls any bay that receives a regular flow of fresh water an "estuary". Davis does state that the terms "lagoon" and "estuary" are "often loosely applied in scientific literature."
Timothy M. Kusky characterizes lagoons as being elongated parallel to the coast, while estuaries are drowned river valleys, elongated perpendicular to the coast; when used within the context of a distinctive portion of coral reef ecosystems, the term "lagoon" is synonymous with the term "back reef" or "backreef", more used by coral reef scientists to refer to the same area. Coastal lagoons are classified as inland bodies of water. Many lagoons do not include "lagoon" in their common names. Albemarle and Pamlico sounds in North Carolina, Great South Bay between Long Island and the barrier beaches of Fire Island in New York, Isle of Wight Bay, which separates Ocean City, Maryland from the rest of Worcester County, Banana River in Florida, Lake Illawarra in New South Wales, Montrose Basin in Scotland, Broad Water in Wales have all been classified as lagoons, despite their names. In England, The Fleet at Chesil Beach has been described as a lagoon. In Latin America, the term laguna in Spanish, which lagoon translates to, may be used for a small fresh water lake in a similar way a creek is considered a small river.
However, sometimes it is popularly used to describe a full-sized lake, such as Laguna Catemaco in Mexico, the third largest lake by area in the country. The brackish water lagoon may be thus explicitly identified as a "coastal lagoon". In Portuguese the same usage is found: lagoa may be a body of shallow sea water, or a small freshwater lake not linked to the sea. Lagoon is derived from the Italian laguna, which refers to the waters around Venice, the Lagoon of Venice. Laguna is attested in English by at least 1612, had been Anglicized to "lagune" by 1673. In 1697 William Dampier referred to a "Lake of Salt water" on the coast of Mexico. Captain James Cook described an island "of Oval form with a Lagoon in the middle" in 1769. Atoll lagoons form as coral reefs grow upwards while the islands that the reefs surround subside, until only the reefs remain above sea level. Unlike the lagoons that form shoreward of fringing reefs, atoll lagoons contain some deep portions. Coastal lagoons form along sloping coasts where barrier islands or reefs can develop off-shore, the sea-level is rising relative to the land along the shore.
Coastal lagoons do not form along steep or rocky coasts, or if the range of tides is more than 4 metres. Due to the gentle slope of the coast, coastal lagoons are shallow, they are sensitive to changes in sea level due to global warming. A relative drop in sea level may leave a lagoon dry, while a rise in sea level may let the sea breach or destroy barrier islands, leave reefs too deep under water to protect the lagoon. Coastal lagoons are young and dynamic, may be short-lived in geological terms. Coastal lagoons are common. In the United States, lagoons are found along more than 75 percent of the Gulf coasts. Coastal lagoons are connected to the open ocean by inlets between barrier islands; the number and size of the inlets, precipitation and inflow of fresh water all affect the nature of the lagoon. Lagoons with little or no interchange with the open ocean, little or no inflow of fresh water, high evaporation rates, such as Lake St. Lucia, in South Africa, may become saline. Lagoons with no connection to the open ocean and significant inflow of fresh water, such as the Lake Worth Lagoon in Florida in the middle of the 19th century, may be fresh.
On the other hand, lagoons with many wide inlets, such as the Wadden Sea, have strong tidal currents and mixing. Coastal lagoons tend to accumulate sediments from inflowing rivers, from runoff from the shores of the lagoon, from sediment carried into the lagoon through inlets by the tide. Large quantities of sediment may be be deposited in a lagoon when storm waves overwash barrier islands. Mangroves and marsh plants can facilitate the accumulation of sediment in a lagoon. Benthic organisms may destabilize sediments. River-mouth lagoons on mixed sand and gravel beaches form at the river-coast interface where a braided, although sometimes meandering, river interacts with a coastal environment, affected by longshore drift; the lagoons which form on the MSG coastlines are common on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand and have long been referred to as hapua by the Māori. This classification differentiates hapua from similar lagoons located on the N
The Lizard
For the village called The Lizard, see Lizard The Lizard is a peninsula in southern Cornwall, United Kingdom. The most southerly point of the British mainland is near Lizard Point at grid reference SW 701115. Lizard village known as The Lizard, is the most southerly on the British mainland, is in the civil parish of Landewednack, the most southerly parish; the valleys of the River Helford and Loe Pool form the northern boundary, with the rest of the peninsula surrounded by sea. The area measures about 14 by 14 miles; the Lizard is one of England's natural regions and has been designated as national character area 157 by Natural England. The peninsula is known for its geology and for its rare plants and lies within the Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. A third of Cornwall has AONB designation, with the same status and protection as a National Park; the name "Lizard" is most a corruption of the Cornish name "Lys Ardh", meaning "high court". The Lizard peninsula's original name may have been the Celtic name "Predannack".
The Lizard's coast is hazardous to shipping and the seaways round the peninsula were known as the "Graveyard of Ships". The Lizard Lighthouse was built at Lizard Point in 1752 and the RNLI operates The Lizard lifeboat station. There is evidence of early habitation with several burial stones. Part of the peninsula is known as the Meneage. Helston, the nearest town to the Lizard peninsula, is said to have once headed the estuary of the River Cober, before it was cut off from the sea by Loe Bar in the 13th century, it is a matter of debate as to whether Helston was once a port, albeit no actual records still exist. Geomorphologists believe the bar was most formed by rising sea levels, after the last ice age, blocking the river and creating a barrier beach; the beach is formed of flint and the nearest source is found offshore under the drowned terraces of the former river that flowed between England and France, now under the English Channel. The medieval port of Helston was at Gweek from around 1260 onwards, on the Helford river which exported tin and copper.
Helston was believed to be around the Dowr Kohar. The name comes from the Cornish "hen lis" or "old court" and "ton" added to denote a Saxon manor, it was granted its charter by King John in 1201. It was here that tin ingots were weighed to determine the duty due to the Duke of Cornwall when a number of stannary towns were authorised by royal decree; the royal manor of Winnianton, held by King William I at the time of the Domesday Book, was the head manor of the hundred of Kerrier and the largest estate in Cornwall. It was assessed as having fifteen hides before 1066. At the time of Domesday there was land for sixty ploughs, but in the lord's land there were two ploughs and in the lands held by villeins twenty-four ploughs. There were forty-one freedmen, thirty-three smallholders and fourteen slaves. There was eight square leagues of pasture and half a square league of woodland; the livestock was three cattle and one hundred and twenty-eight sheep. 11 of the hides were held by the Count of Mortain and there is more arable and pasture and 13 more persons are recorded: Rinsey, Mawgan-in-Meneage and seventeen other lands are recorded under Winnianton.
Mullion has the 15th century church of St Mellanus, the Old Inn from the 16th century. The harbour was completed in 1895 and financed by Lord Robartes of Lanhydrock as a recompense to the fishermen for several disastrous pilchard seasons; the small church of St Peter in Coverack, built in 1885 for £500, has a serpentinite pulpit. The Great Western Railway operated a road motor service to The Lizard from Helston railway station. Commencing on 17 August 1903, it was the first successful British railway-run bus service and was provided as a cheaper alternative to a proposed light railway; the Solar eclipse of 11 August 1999 departed the UK mainland from the Lizard. The transatlantic record run of the unaccompanied one hand sailor Thomas Coville within less than 5 days in his sailboat Sodebo Ultim from New York, USA, to Europe landed here on 15 July 2017; the Lizard has been the site of many maritime disasters. It forms a natural obstacle to entry and exit of Falmouth and its deep estuary. At Lizard Point stands the Lizard Lighthouse.
In fact, the light was erected by Sir John Killigrew by his own expense: It was built at the cost of "20 nobles a year" for 30 years, but it caused an uproar over the following years, as King James I considered charging vessels to pass. This caused so many problems that the lighthouse was demolished, but was rebuilt in 1751 by order of Thomas Fonnereau and remains unchanged today. Further east lie The Manacles, near Porthoustock: 1 1⁄2 square miles of jagged rocks just beneath the waves. In 1721 the Royal Anne Galley, an oared frigate, was wrecked at Lizard Point. Of a crew of 185 only three survived. A 44 gun frigate, HMS Anson, was wrecked at Loe Bar in 1807. Although it wrecked close to shore, many lost their lives in the storm; this inspired Henry Trengrouse to invent the rocket f
Willow
Willows called sallows and osiers, form the genus Salix, around 400 species of deciduous trees and shrubs, found on moist soils in cold and temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Most species are known as willow, but some narrow-leaved shrub species are called osier, some broader-leaved species are referred to as sallow; some willows are creeping shrubs. Willows all have abundant watery bark sap, charged with salicylic acid, soft pliant, tough wood, slender branches, large, fibrous stoloniferous roots; the roots are remarkable for their toughness and tenacity to live, roots sprout from aerial parts of the plant. The leaves are elongated, but may be round to oval with serrated edges. Most species are deciduous. All the buds are lateral; the buds are covered by a single scale. The bud scale is fused into a cap-like shape, but in some species it wraps around and the edges overlap; the leaves are simple, feather-veined, linear-lanceolate. They are serrate, rounded at base, acute or acuminate; the leaf petioles are short, the stipules very conspicuous, resembling tiny, round leaves, sometimes remaining for half the summer.
On some species, they are small and caducous. In color, the leaves show a great variety of greens. Willows are dioecious, with male and female flowers appearing as catkins on separate plants; the staminate flowers are without either calyx with corolla. This scale is square and hairy; the anthers are orange or purple after the flower opens. The filaments are threadlike pale brown, bald; the pistillate flowers are without calyx or corolla, consist of a single ovary accompanied by a small, flat nectar gland and inserted on the base of a scale, borne on the rachis of a catkin. The ovary is one-celled, the style two-lobed, the ovules numerous. All willows take root readily from cuttings or where broken branches lie on the ground; the few exceptions include the goat peachleaf willow. One famous example of such growth from cuttings involves the poet Alexander Pope, who begged a twig from a parcel tied with twigs sent from Spain to Lady Suffolk; this twig was planted and thrived, legend has it that all of England's weeping willows are descended from this first one.
Willows are planted on the borders of streams so their interlacing roots may protect the bank against the action of the water. The roots are much larger than the stem which grows from them. Willows have a wide natural distribution from the tropics to the arctic zones and are extensively cultivated around the world. Willows are cross-compatible, numerous hybrids occur, both and in cultivation. A well-known ornamental example is the weeping willow, a hybrid of Peking willow from China and white willow from Europe; the hybrid cultivar'Boydii' has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit. Numerous cultivars of Salix L. have been named over the centuries. New selections of cultivars with superior technical and ornamental characteristics have been chosen deliberately and applied to various purposes. Most Salix has become an important source for bioenergy production and for various ecosystem services; the first edition of the Checklist for Cultivars of Salix L. was compiled in 2015, which includes 854 cultivar epithets with accompanying information.
The International Poplar Commission of the FAO UN holds the International Cultivar Registration Authority for the genus Salix. The ICRA for Salix produces and maintains The International Register of Cultivars of Salix L.. Willows are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species, such as the mourning cloak butterfly. Ants, such as wood ants, are common on willows inhabited by aphids, coming to collect aphid honeydew, as sometimes do wasps. A small number of willow species were planted in Australia, notably as erosion-control measures along watercourses, they are now regarded as invasive weeds which occupy extensive areas across southern Australia and are considered'Weeds of National Significance'. Many catchment management authorities are replacing them with native trees. Substantial research undertaken from 2006 has identified that willows inhabit an unoccupied niche when they spread across the bed of shallow creeks and streams and if removed, there is a potential water saving of up to 500 ML/per year per hectare of willow canopy area, depending on willow species and climate zone.
This water could benefit the environment or provision of local water resources during dry periods. To aid management of willows, a remote sensing method has been developed to map willow area along and in streams a
Gyllyngvase
Gyllyngvase is one of the four beaches associated with Falmouth, United Kingdom, south of Pendennis Castle. It is to the south of Falmouth town centre, but was an rural area as as the late 19th century. However, the growth of tourism in the town at around the turn of the 20th century saw the area become more built-up and the seafront on Cliff Road became home to several major hotels; the Bay Hotel opened in 1909 halfway along Cliff Road, but closed due to a fire in 1990 and was demolished three years later. Bay Court, a four-storey block of private apartments, was built on the site. Queen Mary Gardens were opened next to Gyllngvase Beach in 1910. Palm Beach Hotel, built in the 1930s, was demolished in 2007, it overlooked Queen Mary Gardens and had closed several years earlier, having been attacked by vandals and arsonists after its closure. On 30 April 2012 the Falmouth Beach Hotel was devastated by a fire which broke out on the third floor, which caused the roof to collapse and significant damage to the building.
The blaze was tackled by some 100 fire fighters. A Russian bulk carrier, the MV Kuzma Minin, ran aground off Gyllyngvase on 18 December 2018, was refloated the same day; the beach at Gyllngvase is wide crescent shaped shelving sandy beach with rockpools to explore and is popular with bathers due to the calm conditions
